Death and All His Friends
by PeachyOnBway
Summary: In a way, destiny is crueler to its heroes than its villains, and though he would have scoffed at you if you called him one, this imperfect man was a hero; it was the fate destiny had set before him. TEMPORARY HIATUS


**AN: Hello fan fiction viewers! I have had this fanfiction account for a while now, but have never actually posted a story, and I feel a little sad about that. _Death and All His Friends_ was a story I originally thought of back after the Avatar: The Last Airbender finale in 2008, but never had the time or drive to write it up. Now, after a summer of boredom and parties, the idea has finally come to life. While I have an outline created, there are still many loose ends; I welcome ideas from readers on how to progress the story, this being my first fanfic :) This prologue and the first few chapters in the story do not contain much of the Avatar world or it's characters, but trust me, this is and Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfiction and the TV show will be the center of this story.**

**About the rating: i know it says T, but I was borderline between T and M for the violence and gore this story will contain. If you think the rating should be changed in anyway, feel free to let me know and I will gladly change it to its appropriate grade.**

**Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender or any of its characters. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own the song: 'Death and All His Friends'{the story's title} by Coldplay  
**

**Death and All His Friends**

_Prologue: The Beginning of The End_

Black rain, it slinks sluggishly down sullen slates of metal. _Pitter patter_, the voice of the malodorous rain water moans on, the only echo reaching a pair of ravaged ears. _Pitter patter_, the voice of gleeful children, racing the echoes of their own footsteps. What an insult to a merry and jubilant child, for children are delicate and radiant. Once upon a time, the sound of their scurrying feet flooded the drowsiest minds with cheer. Children should rest in the company of the spring flowers that twinkle with the morning dew drops, or the warm and uncontainable joy of a holiday's beginning. Today, however, is not the start of a joyous celebration; but the beginning of the end.

This murky deathbed choruses the finale of a tale, a tale of a life, a vicious one, no doubt. A life that's luck was depleted on the dawn of its beginning; the life of a child, mauled by abuse and terror. The life of a teen, manipulated and tortured into believing wrong was right. The life a man, seeing in black and white in a world full of gray. The life of a person, desperately attempting to be just in a world of injustice. In a way, destiny is crueler to its heroes than its villains, and though he would have scoffed at you, if you called him one, this imperfect man was a hero; it was the fate destiny had set before him.

Fiendish scents morph into shrouded figures, lingering on the verge of the smoldering rubble; faces of the dead scatter the remains glorious and charred buildings. Flames still flicker in the empty eye sockets of what were the enemies of this story, the 'bad' guys, some might say. Of course there are no true saviors and villains, just as there is no definite good and evil. Everything is relative to one's perspective, a delicacy that has overstuffed these crumbled nations since the Beginning. They are all just people in the widest scope. The smoking limbs and scorched bones amongst the wreckage were once people. The man sprawled out beyond the verge, that earns the reapers pity, is a person.

I suppose he was a handsome fellow at a point in time, another relative illusion this tortured world clings to, but the poison of war and strife brands even the most exotic beauties with its scars. As black as the scorched pavement he seems, hardly anything but a still shadow sleeping in the Valley of Death. Black blood, a torrent of filth and gore, oozes in slippery streams, a final bath in crimson wine. The tattered scrapes of mercenary grab lie in ragged, mud-soaked splinters across the crater; through his nakedness and vulnerability matter not, when no living eyes are left to view it. In the sickly concoction of ash and mud, distinguishing a breathing soul out of the gore and destruction would have been improbable; however, even in the gloom, a shaggy mob of silvery white hair shimmers through the bleak and pitiful.

A gift from the spirits I've heard it said in my realms, the mark of someone 'special'. At this thought, my ghostly lips turn up in the memory of a grin, one of tragic comedy, and I shift my focus to the victim of destiny's hand. Forever frozen in a clutching motion, the few shattered remains of the bomb sticking to the thick crimson paste on his broken and severed fingers.

'Special', the word repeats itself in the little of a mind the spirits granted me. The motionless man whose life destiny has condemned on the day of its dawning, the once child whose feet went pitter patter with glee, the man who loved and lost in a land where fairness disappeared long ago, lies in a forgotten funeral ground, final moments discarded with the pitter patter of the rain. A deathbed for other men and women who had striven for cowardice to escape the doom of heroism, afraid to fight for something worthwhile, something special.

One doesn't choose to be special, nor do they prepare for the baggage power brings. It's an unwelcome burden, thrust upon a soul, a hardship that must be carried out. Fate decides, not the silly minds of man.

After all, if you wrote your own destiny, would you write a tale of tragedy and pain?

**AN: What do you think? I know it's short but it's just a prologue. The first chapter is in the works, and knowing my busy schedule, it might not be up for a while. However, if there are people that are really interested in this story, I will time as hard as I can to get an update soon :)**


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